The spallation of aluminum, chromium, and iron oxide scales is a chronic problem that critically impacts technological applications like aerospace, power plant operation, catalysis, petrochemical industry, and the fabrication of composite materials. The presence of interfacial impurities, mainly sulfur, has been reported to accelerate spallation, thereby promoting the high-temperature corrosion of metals and alloys. The precise mechanism for sulfur-induced destruction of oxides, however, is ambiguous. The objective of the present research is to elucidate the microscopic mechanism for the high-temperature corrosion of aluminum alloys in the presence of sulfur. Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), low energy electron diffraction (LEED), and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) studies were conducted under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions on oxidized sulfur-free and sulfur-modified Al/Fe and Ni3Al(111). Evaporative deposition of aluminum onto a sulfur-covered iron surface results in the insertion of aluminum between the sulfur adlayer and the substrate, producing an Fe-Al-S interface. Aluminum oxidation at 300 K is retarded in the presence of sulfur. Oxide destabilization, and the formation of metallic aluminum are observed at temperatures > 600 K when sulfur is located at the Al2O3-Fe interface, while the sulfur-free interface is stable up to 900 K. In contrast, the thermal stability (up to at least 1100 …

Human operant studies frequently use points exchangeable for money as reinforcers. Some studies employ more immediately consumable reinforcers to emulate properties of food reinforcers. This study examined demand for points/money and for sound-clips to compare their economic characteristics. Across four participants, demand was often higher and less elastic for points/money than for sounds. During subsequent exposures at each response requirement, demand for sounds often decreased to a greater degree than demand for points/money. Thus, sound-clips seem less durable than points/money across prices and across repeated exposure to the same price. Response rates for points/money were often higher than for sounds, suggesting that reinforcers that generate higher response rates may be less elastic than reinforcers that generate lower response rates.

This publication of the Dallas-Fort Worth Section of the American Chemical Society includes information about research, prominent scientist, organizational business, and various other stories of interest to the community.

The purpose of this study was to use the Global Water Stormwater Sampler SS201 to characterize the urban runoff in Pecan Creek. Location of the samplers was influenced by land use and ease of installation. Determination of the constituents for analysis was modeled after those used in the NPDES permit for seven cities within the Dallas/Ft.Worth metroplex. Some metals, notably cadmium and arsenic, exceeded the U.S. EPA's MCL's. Statistical analysis revealed first flush samples to be significantly more concentrated than composite samples. Minimum discharge loadings were found to be significantly lower than maximum discharge loadings. Additionally there were significant differences of specific constituents between station locations and storm events.

Early antebellum defenders of slavery acknowledged that slavery created problems for southern society. They contended, however, that slave society was better and more natural than other forms of social organization. Thomas R. Dew, William Harper, and James Henry Hammond each expressed a social philosophy in which slavery had a crucial role in preserving social order. They argued from the basis of social organicism, the idea that society should have an elite that controlled the masses. For all three men, slavery represented a system of order that helped balance the dangers of democracy. Significantly, however, all three men recognized that the slave system was not perfect, and despite their defense of slavery, argued that it was a human institution and therefore corruptible.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not children diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) or Central Auditory Processing Disorder (CAPD) can be distinguished from one another on the basis of both objective and subjective assessment of attention and behavior. First, children and adolescents diagnosed with ADHD, CAPD, and concomitant ADHD/CAPD were compared to participants with emotional problems on measures of attention/concentration, depression, anxiety, and parental reports of internalzing and externalizing behaviors. Overall, statistical analyses did not reveal significant differences between performances of children diagnosed with ADHD and those diagnosed with CAPD. However, clinical comparisons across groups of children diagnosed with ADHD, CAPD, comorbid ADHD/CAPD and Affective Disorders revealed condition-specific clinical profiles, thus providing some support for CAPD as a distinct clinical entity. Second, exploratory cluster analysis was performed to further investigate the relationship between ADHD and CAPD. This procedure lead to the identification of four distinct clusters. However, analyses of these clusters revealed no distinct pattern of performance for children diagnosed with either ADHD or CAPD. Rather, participants with these diagnoses were evenly distributed throughout the clusters. Additionally, no cluster clearly represented the expected clinical profile for a diagnosis of CAPD- namely, significant auditory attentional/processing problems …

In this research, the application of intelligent mobile agents to the management of distributed network environments is investigated. Intelligent mobile agents are programs which can move about network systems in a deterministic manner in carrying their execution state. These agents can be considered an application of distributed artificial intelligence where the (usually small) agent code is moved to the data and executed locally. The mobile agent paradigm offers potential advantages over many conventional mechanisms which move (often large) data to the code, thereby wasting available network bandwidth. The performance of agents in network routing and knowledge acquisition has been investigated and simulated. A working mobile agent system has also been designed and implemented in JDK 1.2.

Environmental management agencies make efforts to reduce pollution loading in streams and rivers by promoting vegetated buffer zones between human activity and water. Most of these efforts do not mesh water quality-based buffer zone width requirements with conservation and wildlife values, specifically, the use of these riparian forest corridors for wildlife dispersal between habitats in highly fragmented landscapes. Forest interior birds are of the most concern to management in riparian forests due to their population declines across much of their breeding range. This dissertation investigates the role that landscape-level and habitat-level factors play on the presence of breeding birds in riparian forests, particularly the landscape and habitat factors that are influenced by human-caused fragmentation. This study describes research at the Ray Roberts Greenbelt, Denton, Texas, that explores the relationships between the landscape and forest habitats of the Greenbelt with its breeding bird community. The major findings of this study are that bird communities in the corridor forests are associated with a greater array of factors than are bird communities in patches, suggesting that the birds of patch forests are somewhat insulated from landscape-scale effects. Also, habitat values can be maintained in corridors, but there does not seem to be a …

Individuals undergoing forensic neuropsychological evaluation frequently stand to gain in some manner if neurocognitive dysfunction is diagnosed. As a result, neuropsychologists are customarily asked to test for neurocognitive feigning during the assessment. The current study employed an analogue design with a clinical comparison group to examine the utility of the TOCA (Rogers, 1996) as a measure of feigned neurocognitive impairment. Two groups of simulators (one cautioned about the presence of detection strategies and one not cautioned) were compared to clinical and normal control groups. Fourteen scales were developed based on five detection strategies: symptom validity testing, performance curve, magnitude of error, response time, and floor effect. Each was employed during both verbal and nonverbal tasks. Significant differences were revealed among groups when subjected to ANOVA. Classification rates from subsequent utility estimates and discriminant function analyses on the scales ranged from 58.8% to 100%. Combining strategies yielded a classification rate of 95.7%. The effect of cautioning simulators was modest; however, a trend was noted on some scales for cautioned simulators to appear less obviously impaired than noncautioned. Although the results require crossvalidation, preliminary data suggest that the TOCA is a sensitive and specific measure of feigned neurocognitive performance. Strengths and weaknesses …

The primary purpose of this study was to determine if the implementation of an intervention involving teachers' use of children's literature, related storybook manipulatives, and a scaffolding (LMS) approach to learning would improve preschool children's mathematics test scores. Additionally, the LMS approach was examined to determine whether teachers' perceptions of their effectiveness in mathematics instruction changed from the beginning to the end of the study. The subjects of the study included 60 preschool-aged children and six teachers from two child care centers. The preschool teachers participated in either a control or experimental condition (the LMS approach) in their daily mathematics instruction with their preschool children. The researcher tested the children using the Test of Early Mathematics Ability and an abbreviated version of the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scale. The study was based on two main research questions. The first question asked if there was a difference in the Test of Early Mathematics Ability total posttest scores between children in the literature-manipulatives-scaffolding intervention group and children in the control group after assuring equivalency of the two groups. The second question addressed if preschool teachers believed they were more effective in their mathematics instruction after implementing the LMS approach with young children. The answer …

Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher," as early as 1839, reveals an uneasiness about the space of the house. Most literary scholars accept that this anxiety exists and causes some tension, since it seems antithetical to another dominant motif, that of the power of place and the home as sanctuary. My critical persona, like Poe's narrator in "The House of Usher," looks into a dark, silent tarn and shudders to see in it not only the reflection of the House of Usher, but perhaps the whole of what is "Southern" in Southern Literature. Many characters who inhabit the worlds of Southern stories also inhabit houses that, like the House of Usher, are built on the faulty foundation of an ideological system that divides the world into inside(r)/outside(r) and along numerous other binary lines. The task of constructing the self in spaces that house such ideologies poses a challenge to the characters in the works under consideration in this study, and their success in doing so is dependant on their ability to speak authentically in the language of silence and to dwell instead of to just inhabit interior spaces. In my reading of Faulkner and Warren, this ideology of …

Most of my childhood was spent in either the expansive suburbs of north Texas or on a farm in southern Oklahoma. The experience of growing up in these two regions has done much to shape my sense of aesthetic. From these early experiences, I have developed two completely divergent ideas of beauty which I've tried to reconcile in my artwork. The first influence is that of sparseness, simplicity and the commonplace. This influence comes from the emptiness of the suburban landscape, the sameness of its architecture and the need to find beauty in mundane things as a simple cure for boredom. The second major idea is centered around peculiarity, chaotic complexity and irrationality. This interest originally stems from early memories of my grandfather, whose experiences in Oklahoma during the Great Depression gave him the obsessive habit of never discarding anything for fear that he might need it some day. The complexity in meaning that comes from unfamiliar combinations has allowed the ideas in my work a kind of ambiguity that frees it from any singular reading. I think the content of my work could best be described as constructions of memories, experiences and influences. I never speak about any one …

This experiment attempted to study the effectiveness of biofeedback training on an individual's peak performance while performing a stress-provoking task. In a between subjects design 30 individual college students were divided into 2 groups. One group received auditory biofeedback and relaxation training, and the other group received no training. Both groups met the researcher for 1 hour a week for seven weeks. During each session the participant completed a ten-minute Competition and Coaction (C & C) computer software program (Shea, 1992). The biofeedback equipment recorded the physiological state of each of the participants while he/she performed the C & C task. Both groups' physiological values and C & C scores were compared using the SPSS software. The biofeedback group had statistically lower stress values than the non-biofeedback group (Schwartz, 1995). There was no statistical difference between the 2 groups' C & C scores. The STAI Y-1 and Y-2 anxiety inventories were given to each of the participants at the 1st and 7th session to examine the anxiety differences between the 2 groups. There were no statistical differences between the 2 groups' STAI scores. This study's findings show that individuals can be taught to lower their stress response while performing a …

To look at the effect of free play on the musical improvisations of first, second and third grade children, 108 children were randomly assigned to either a control or treatment group. Subjects were tested using a researcher-designed instrument to elicit an improvisatory response. The control group then received regular music instruction (120 minutes every 2 weeks) and the treatment group received regular music instruction in conjunction with musical free play (100 minutes of instruction and 20 minutes of free play every 2 weeks). The treatment lasted 14 weeks. At the end of the treatment, all students were tested with the same testing instrument used for the pre test. Videotapes of the improvisations were submitted to three independent judges to rate for quality on a 5-point Likert scale. The change in ratings between pre and post tests were analyzed with an analysis of variance to determine if there were significant differences between the control and treatment groups. The analysis of the data revealed no significant difference in the change of ratings between control and treatment groups for the group as a whole, or for any particular grade level within the total group.

Montmorillonite reinforced polymers are a new development in the area of nanocomposite materials. Since reinforcement of epoxy is important to the development of high strength adhesives and composite matrices, the introduction of montmorillonite to epoxy is of interest. Compositional effects on epoxy reactivity, on molecular relaxation, and on mechanical properties were investigated. Change in reactivity was determined by Differential Scanning Calorimetry. Tensile properties at room temperature indicated improved modulus and retention of strength of the epoxy matrix but a decreased elongation to failure. Depression of dry nanocomposite glass transition was observed for nanocomposites beyond 5% by weight montmorillonite. Samples that were saturated with water showed lower moduli due to the epoxy matrix. The greatest moisture absorption rate was found at 7%, the least at 3%.

The purpose of this study is to examine housing construction trends in the Denton Independent School District area for the next 5 years estimating impacts on the resulting school district enrollments. Combining enrollment data obtained from the DISD and housing data from the Denton County Appraisal District, it is possible to calculate enrollment multipliers for elementary, middle, and high school students based on predefined categories of single family home values. The study suggests that enrollment multipliers currently used by the DISD over estimate the number of students coming from new single family residences, especially at the elementary school level. Using data from real estate agents, builders, developers, and permitting boards, a map is created showing areas of the DISD that will likely see the largest gains in school-age children during the next 2 to 5 years.

Women have been part of modern revolutions since the American Revolution against Great Britain. Most descriptions and analyses of revolution relegate women to a supporting role, or make no mention of women's involvement at all. This work differs from prior efforts in that it will explore one possible explanation for the successes of three revolutions based upon the levels of women's support for those revolutions. An analysis of the three cases (Ireland, Russia, and Nicaragua) suggests a series of hypotheses about women's participation in revolution and its importance to revolutions' success.

Jules Massenet's mélodies feature a distinct vocal treatment regarding musical prosody through his eight song cycles, including Poëme d'Avril, Poëme Pastoral, Poëme du Souvenir, Poëme d'Amour, Poëme d'Hiver, Poëme d'un Soir, and Quelques Chansons Mauves, and a collection, Expressions Lyriques. These mélodies show the influence of the trend of salon music and the high-level poetry from the poetic movements of romanticism, Parnassianism, and symbolism. This study deals with Massenet's mélodies relating to the prosody idea, which is conspicuous in his vocal treatment. His melodic styles feature four distinct aspects of vocal treatment including lyrical, recitative or parlando, melodramatic, and déclamation rhythmée, and represent the idea of musical prosody of phonetic, syntactic, and semantic aspects. Massenet's other musical idioms such as harmony, form, and piano treatment, are also closely related to the prosody matter as a semantic aspect, reinforcing the poetic mood and content. In this study, each melodic style related to French versification is examined in detail. The musical analysis regarding the other musical idioms on selected examples presents the semantic feature of prosody idea. The brief review of French versification and opinions regarding the performance are included. Massenet's contribution to the genre of mélodie, with the prose melody and …

The case study described in this thesis involves a process improvement project in the Tax Department of a Certified Public Accounting firm. A process map was created by interviewing employees involved in the process. A process analysis identified problems and possible solutions. The Partners in the firm decided to streamline the process for simple tax returns in order to make them more profitable. This study examined what impact, if any, the process improvement intervention had on key financial and operational measures. Results indicated that the tax returns prepared in the new process were faster, cheaper, and more profitable. This study indicates that organizations conducting process improvement interventions can beneficially affect key financial and operational measures.

An analysis of the transformation from Stravinsky's opera The Nightingale to The Song of the Nightingale, a symphonic poem by the same composer. The text includes a brief history of Stravinsky's life and the genesis of The Nightingale and The Song of the Nightingale. The bulk of the dissertation discusses actual changes employed by Stravinsky (with score examples). Patterns of modifications are identified and discussed as they relate to the composer's change of attitude in orchestration. The analysis focuses on overall patterns of alteration imposed by Stravinsky and their perceived effectiveness achieving a symphonic aural outcome.

This study examined how current family counseling/therapy programs train students to work with families with young children and made recommendations for training in this area based on recommendations of child and family therapy experts and the research and clinical literature. These recommendations explored what knowledge and skills all students should acquire versus students who want to specialize with this population. Changes to accreditation standards were also proposed as well as a description of resources to support changes in program curricula. Current training was measured by examining curricula from master's level marriage and family counseling/therapy programs accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education (COAMFTE) and the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Education Programs (CACREP) and master's level social work programs with a family-related concentration accredited by the Council on Social Work Education Commission on Accreditation (CSWE), the accreditation standards from these three organizations, course syllabi from the COAMFTE and CACREP programs, and surveys of COAMFTE and CACREP program directors (60% response rate). Recommendations for training were obtained through a qualitative analysis of quotations from the literature concerning training and through interviews of child and family therapy experts (65% response rate). The results revealed the …

The purpose of this study was to describe the intentions of the designers of the Professional Development and Appraisal System (PDAS) in Texas and the perceptions of teachers regarding its implementation. Information for the study was gathered in two phases using two methodologies. The first was a semi-structured interview with four expert informants instrumental in the design and implementation of the PDAS at the state level. The second component of the study was conducted with teachers using a 37-item Likert survey. The population for this phase of the study was 150 elementary and 150 secondary teachers chosen randomly from three school districts in North Central Texas. The districts were selected to represent a variety of sizes in regard to student population and represent diverse student population characteristics and socioeconomic levels. Data from the semi-structured interviews and the returned surveys were analyzed to determine the designers' intentions and areas of emphasis and to describe the alignment the teachers' perceptions and the designers' intentions. Quantitative data gathered from the surveys were analyzed using descriptive statistics as well as a correlation and function analysis and analysis based on a Cronbach alpha coefficient. The analysis of data revealed the following: 1. Teachers perceived that …

This study addresses the issue of household disaster preparedness. This work contributes two elements to disaster research. The first contribution improve the knowledge of the factors that affect household disaster preparedness. The review of literature yielded three categories of variables that can jointly explain household disaster preparedness: household structure, demographics, and risk-perception factors. In this study 19 variables compose these factors. A second contribution constitutes a theoretical exploration of the concept of disaster preparedness. In this work, four different constructs of disaster preparedness were tested. These constructs include material preparedness, preparedness activities, a combined index, and a weighted and combined index. The study presents the logic and methodology of the index construction and validation. The data used in this study came from households in the Montreal Urban Community (MUC) in Canada. A random sample of 1,003 English- and French-speaking heads of households adequately represents the 1.8 million persons within the MUC. An independent survey firm conducted the interviews in 1996. Results show that the weighted combined household disaster preparedness index constitutes the best construct to represent the concepts under study. Study results also reveal that risk-perception variables (attitudinal factors) offered the strongest explanatory power. Household structure and demographic variables collectively …

Monthly newspaper from Corpus Christi, Texas published by the Diocese of Corpus Christi that includes news of interest to Diocese members along with advertising.